Writers Read Their Early Sh*t

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Jason for a jaw about Thousand Island pirates, comfort reading, defacing books, fireworks for Hitler, getting your ego out of the way of the writing, & a naked onion in the park with Pierre Berton. Music, as always, by DJ Warm Farm Milk Max in Tokyo. Thanks to Wayne Emde for the artwork, Joe Emde for help with the intro, & Sasha Emde for help with the outro....

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Vancouver's Poet Laureate for a ramble about Emily of New Moon, writing into fear & anxiety, concrete corpses in the living room, goth trenchcoats, werewolves draped in mourning, having some feelings & a trombone, reading to dogs, & the real answer to the question "How do I get published?" Music, as always, by savage hunk DJ Max in Tokyo....

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes author Steven Lattey for a yackety-yak about Dylan & Ginsberg, reading with patience & gratitude, hitchhiking, convenient access to suffering & struggle, glories never ceasing & glories never coming, & self-help gone bad. There’s a bit of poetry, as well, & you can check out more of Steven's stuff at www.stevenlattey.ca . Music by savage...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Corinna Chong for a confab about when we stop regretting the people—& the writers—we used to be, plugging gaps with memories, plagiarizing ABBA, the power of end stops, the superpowers writers need, heart worms, licorice holders, & defacing pristine notebooks. Music by savage hunk DJ Max in Tokyo. Thanks to Wayne Emde for the artwork & photography &...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes songwriter & musician Daniel Powter for a chinwag about the mysteries of remote Vernon, British Columbia, skipping class to play piano, how Jason didn't launch Daniel's musical career, smashed violins, Prince's Lovesexy tour, not impressing your mum, not knowing who's the prime minister of Canada, and Nite Magic anti-action. Music by Daniel,...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Lorna Crozier for a gab & a yak about stone angels, that shivery sense good writing gives you, being corny & earnest, unwrapping your brain, just what it is about cats anyway, Kerouac in Vernon, riding the poem wherever it wants to go, and how, by God, there is light. And then Lorna makes Jason cry. Music by savage hunk DJ Max in Tokyo, artwork by Wayne Emde...

Send us Fan Mail We're not sinking—we're crashing! Jason welcomes the titans of Season One back for a clash of cringe that runs the gamut from brambles & hassles to madness levels to walls dripping tears to using the microwave after 10 pm to the wind blowing you from behind. This is early shit that's WAY too legit to quit.  Dave Antich, Victoria Taylor, Alison Wassermann, &...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Japanese media personality Kaho Shibuya for a prismatic chat about reading novels to understand Japan, teachers turning into deer, an unusual use for Minute Maid Morning Banana jelly, being jealous of temples, & how cooking at home befriends you in the realm of your budget. Also discussed: the recent English translation of Kaho's book, 'The Japanese Po...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes novelist Nathan Whitock for a waffle about Pulsar & the Six Million Dollar Man, the problem with free jazz, not being attracted to the perverse & underground, candied bile, David Foster Wallace, & Nathan's infamous take down of Oliver Stone's 'JFK.'  Nathan also violates the show's premise & reads something early but definite...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes writer, musician, and publisher Michael Whone for an interface about the joys of the mundane, still hating Dostoevsky, last books, shoplifting Kerouac, and Jason's upcoming poetry collection, little bit die, published by Michael's Bolero Bird imprint. Special bonuses: music from Michael's new acid jazz album, The Light Is Laced, & some non-early,...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes memoirist Kelly S. Thompson for a free-ranging ramble about mentoring & being mentored, shitty first drafts, lingering in the ugly, basic training of the mind, misanthropic penguins, cavemen fighting spacemen, bull terriers named Ham, & Kelly's new book, "Still, I Cannot Save You." Music by the angelic DJ Max in Tokyo (www.youtube.com/channel/...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes US National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead for a freewheeling ramble about being blessed with mentors, hearing everybody's story, post office death messages, visiting Hunter S. Thompson, shotgunned Xmas trees, & unconventional sex education. Music by the delicious DJ Max in Tokyo (www.youtube.com/channel/UC2U1n0V9JT89-tH2fNubDMg) & Ron & his band....

Send us Fan Mail Writers Read Their Early Shit enjoys its first threesome as Jason welcomes national treasures John Lent and Jude Clarke for a wide-ranging confabulation about pirate adventures, clammy Edmonton bookmobiles, garage stations, gothic 14 point horror stories, escaping gravity's pull, murdering adjectives & adverbs, old age & treachery, & learning about how to become l...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes Chinese-Canadian poet, playwright, & essayist Dale Lee Kwong for a gas about lesbian tours of China, insulting punctuation, Tom Wayman, tech-nostalgia, being glad to have a dad, the goddess of reality, & how all of the best people have a Vernon, BC connection, whether they know it or not. Music, as always, by the dangerous DJ Max in Tokyo; check out his beat...

Send us Fan Mail Holy doodle! Jason welcomes one of his oldest & longest-suffering pals for a nostalgia-soaked ramble about high school airbands, role-playing games, pretty good nosebleeds, trying to be Leonard Cohen, & being robbed blind by John Cobra. Roger not only bravely shares some of his high school-era poetry, he turns the table & shares some of Jason's as well. Say goodby...

Send us Fan Mail "Our mistakes make the best stories, and that's why we should not think of them as failures." In the second of their already legendary chats, Jason & Susan discuss Egyptian typewriters & Italian ranch hands, evolutionary obsequies, reading with Gregory Corso in Amsterdam, vodka made from San Francisco fog, when 'vagina' is the right word, & the...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes legendary Canadian poet Susan Musgrave and the two get to gabbing—about Leonard Cohen, the House of Carnage, ghosts, grief, stones, Sharon Olds, pre-traumatic stress disorder, how to read poetry, and relearning that the table isn't there—until they run out of time, long before they ever get around to any of Susan's early work. "I've got to go pic...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes under-qualified window-washer Dave Olson & his fantastic beard & beautiful hands for a natter about punching or hugging Dostoevsky, see-through loincloths, meeting REM, borrowing mustard from Allen Ginsberg, dodgy Greyhound stations, working out the writing life math, and how cheerleaders are people too. There's ropey Egyptian history, a savage polemic,...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes scarily talented singer-songwriter Amanda Tiffin for a nostalgic chinwag about Amanda's musical origin story, Zimbabwean adventures, Edie Brickell phases, discovering the G augmented chord, Footloose in reverse, squeezing early shit out of annoying roommates, & watching the lights go on. Music by Amanda herself—including a gorgeous voice-&-piano Paul Si...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes KISS ROOM legend Matt Porter for a bombastic, fire & thunder chinwag about Mr. Mutant, learning to do things by making a fool of yourself, escaping from the apes, Duran Duran videos, The Mask saving the president from an assassin's poison-slathered knife, & having hair like melting toothpaste & legs like a piano. It's all action all the time on...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes UBC Creative Writing prof & author of the Hillary Gravendyk Prize-winning poetry collection 'The Silk the Moths Ignore' Bronwen Tate for a barely-rescued-from-oblivion confabulation about inefficiency spaces, poetry in the body, red with flesh in it, tender cringe, soggy memories left out in the rain, picking up Squeed on the highway, & Bronwen dro...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to WRTES Season Two (& it’s a big one). Excitingly expanding the format, Jason welcomes master podcaster and philosopher-pirate Rob Kelly for a freewheeling, ninety-miles-an-hour-down-a-dead-end-street chinwag about the correct way to butter dinner rolls (according to Harlan Ellison), naming your kids after Dylan characters, the adventures of Ace Kilroy, Somerset Maugh...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes his long-time literary chum Stephen 'Tom' McKenna for a tender ramble about bludgeoning writers they don't like, ritual suicide in porno detail, movies about writers, Hamnet, stroking flanks, birthdays at Pizza Patio, the Dukes of Hazzard, & how (all evidence to the contrary) reading has made them better people. Jason also shares some very early s...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes English songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Andrew Tyrone Rodgers for a jaw about accidentally wearing Lincoln Park t-shirts, DKPs (Duran-KISS Pleasures), fixing holes, revisiting childhood poems, cosmic hot pots, too much pop in the park on a Friday, internet cafés, & losing & finding family members. Music by both Andy & the bombastic DJ Max in Tokyo...

Send us Fan Mail Jason welcomes legendary Pods & Sods co-host, Debbie Gibson enthusiast, & pop/rock/rap fantasist Craig Smith for a river deep, mountain high ramble about keyboards made of dynamite, Beatles-obsessed drug-dealing uncle-cousins, discographies of imaginary bands, the best Milli Vanilli video, the constant disappointment of heartbreak, Duran Duran's 'The Chauffeur,&a...